Spent some time today looking at National Archive photos and Wikimedia Commons pics and found these parallel pics.
Dorothea Lange’s photos of the Dust Bowl, Migrants in California, and the general sadness and despair caused by land abuse and economic abuse seem oddly contemporary.
Thanksgivng Hero
The Tucson community is once again abuzz with news of Gabby Giffords. This time it is good news. While you may not agree with Blue Dog support of everything military as Gabby has tended to do in her political career, she does provide inspiration and shows what determination can do if you have medical and family support to complete a supportive components of a healing triangle.
Today she and her husband Mark served Thanksgiving Dinner on base at Davis Monthan AFB here in Tucson today. Local news coverage of the surprise visit is available at KOLD‘s website. It is worth the watch.
A most important element of her recovery had not occurred to me until I read about what she and her husband Mark’s visit could mean to wounded service persons who are also healing as much as they can from the concussive brain injuries that are routine in this last wave of wars they’ve been fighting. I’m still hoping Gabby will become an active representative in the gun safety movement, but whether she does or not, she will be serving and inspiring one of her most vulnerable constituent populations and doing so from the informed perspective of a fellow brain injury survivor.
How she survived is beyond my level of understanding. That she survived is beyond my understanding. How she manages to do the painstaking rehabilitation work she does, let alone be able to find the strength to make constituent visits like this one to DMAFB is totally beyond my poor understanding.
Happy Birthday Grand Daughters!
Sharing something from my amazingly adept at poetic endeavors son-in-law to the Grandbabies on their first birthday, which always and forever happens to be today.
a picture window. Georgia you’re standing on a couch, your hands
pressed to the glass. You are smiling, but your mouth is wide open,
so it’s like you’re both smiling and trying to swallow the landscape. Josie,
you are sitting on the floor staring at Georgia. You, too, have your mouth agape.
It appears you want to swallow your sister.
I have a picture of that summer. There’s a thunderstorm going on outsideHome and Family
Thanksgiving approaches and it is a special one.
Aren’t they all? My daughter graduates from college in a few weeks and moves away. She stayed in the old hometown for college, and so this move away is her first real move away from home. I’ve considered myself in the same category as empty nesters for a couple years, and my daughter considers herself independent, though my wallet disagrees, but I’m very happy I’ve had so much time with her. I never had sisters, my mother and I were never close, so my daughter and I learned a lot from each other. I’m so thankful we have had all this time. She has been so good for me, and I will miss her only being a few minutes away at most.
We moved in here, to our current residence, almost 21 years ago to the day. My daughter was 11 months old then. The house didn’t have A/C, central heating, or anything but a lone palm tree, an undernourished pomegranate tree, and a spindly ornamental orange tree in the front yard. It is pretty lush now. The house has 600 square ft more now than it did then. It now has a roof deck, a flagstone patio, and a sprinkler system. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life. This home is the only one my daughter remembers. This house has become home in a sense that rivals my childhood home, a family farm, and the land there to which I still feel a nearly visceral connection.
I am enjoying home and family in a celebration of thanksgiving.
Why Buying Local Is Better, Usually
If you are a small business operator starting out in a new direction, as I am, there is so much to consider beyond the usual business plan if you are also a political creature, as I am.
When I was a graduate student studying semiotic analysis of cultural systems, my major professor told me there were two kinds of people: lumpers and splitters. There are those who are contextual and inclusive and those who are detail oriented and exclusive. I try to include as much contextual information as possible in my decision making and I can get bogged down in details, but usually I get wrapped up in threads or linked connections, so I think of myself as a lumper.
So today I am writing about the some of the significant, but often under-valued, contexts within which local business takes place.
We are careening into shopping season. This Friday is called Black Friday. While some say the term relates to Philadelphia and traffic snarls noted on this day in the 1960s, I am talking about its meaning as a day when stores go into the black, as in show a profit. There is some truth to this meaning especially in difficult economic times. Holiday shopping can make or break businesses. It is also promotes buying a bunch of plastic, foreign-made items that no one really needs.
One approach to countering this cult of consumerist crap buying is Buy Nothing Day. Observance of this day is counter to the concept of Black Friday. I don’t go for the stuck in traffic purchase frenzy of flaring frustrations and tempers that is this the day after Thanksgiving. So this year I plan to have this Friday be a Walk to a Neighborhood Store or Buy Local Day. This is where I am a lumper and not a splitter. I am combining the reality of this Friday being a day off from work for most folks when Christmas shopping can be done with the reality that we as patriotic Americans and concerned local community members in that I will NOT go to Target, WalMart, or any Big Box Stores and only go to locally owned businesses. This is a compromise as I’m not saying don’t go to local franchises, and I’m just saying buy local, don’t buy junk, and if possible shop in your neighborhood… and maybe bake something, visit a neighbor, or play a board game with your family.
Militarization, Exploitation and Abuse
Even the military would not start out in riot gear and spray toxic chemicals on peaceful protestors as a first response to students occupying part of their campus.
We are doing just this. Will we tolerate it?
What about the use of hugely expensive equipment created for dropping bombs, predator drones, on the U.S.-Mexican Border as is now being done?
We’ve been allowing members of our national legislature to engage in insider trading? Why?
At least one fifth of our children are sexually abused before they reach adulthood. (It is estimated that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will have experienced an episode of sexual abuse while younger than 18 years.) Institutions within religious education and athletic mentoring are often involved either in the actual abuse or turn away from or cover-up abuse by adults within their organizations.
How can we allow these things to go on?
Untreated mental illness in our nation where treatment is very expensive, is a factor in the man captured this past week who shot at the First Family’s living quarters area in the white house, as well as in this year’s Tucson shooting of which we were all reminded when we saw Gabby Giffords on 20/20 this past Monday.
I’m very sad and wondering what I should do. I feel like writing about these things is important, but is it enough? For me and for right now I have to say, “Yes.”